Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
England: Vols. I–IV. 1876–79.
The Cock
By Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892)O
To which I most resort,
How goes the time? ’T is five o’clock.
Go fetch a pint of port:
But let it not be such as that
You set before chance-comers,
But such whose father-grape grew fat
On Lusitanian summers.
But may she still be kind,
And whisper lovely words, and use
Her influence on the mind,
To make me write my random rhymes,
Ere they be half forgotten;
Nor add and alter, many times,
Till all be ripe and rotten.
Her laurel in the wine,
And lays it thrice upon my lips,
These favored lips of mine;
Until the charm have power to make
New lifeblood warm the bosom,
And barren commonplaces break
In full and kindly blossom.
Her gradual fingers steal
And touch upon the master-chord
Of all I felt and feel.
Old wishes, ghosts of broken plans,
And phantom hopes assemble;
And that child’s heart within the man’s
Begins to move and tremble.
By many pleasant ways,
Against its fountain upward runs
The current of my days:
I kiss the lips I once have kissed;
The gas-light wavers dimmer;
And softly, through a vinous mist,
My college friendships glimmer.
Unboding critic-pen,
Or that eternal want of pence
Which vexes public men,
Who hold their hands to all, and cry
For that which all deny them,—
Who sweep the crossings, wet or dry,
And all the world go by them.
Though fortune clip my wings,
I will not cramp my heart, nor take
Half-views of men and things.
Let Whig and Tory stir their blood;
There must be stormy weather;
But for some true result of good
All parties work together.
If old things, there are new;
Ten thousand broken lights and shapes,
Yet glimpses of the true.
Let raffs be rife in prose and rhyme,
We lack not rhymes and reasons,
As on this whirligig of Time
We circle with the seasons.
With fair horizons bound:
This whole wide earth of light and shade
Comes out, a perfect round.
High over roaring Temple Bar,
And, set in Heaven’s third story,
I look at all things as they are,
But through a kind of glory.
Half-mused or reeling ripe,
The pint you brought me was the best
That ever came from pipe.
But though the port surpasses praise,
My nerves have dealt with stiffer.
Is there some magic in the place?
Or do my peptics differ?
No pint of white or red
Had ever half the power to turn
This wheel within my head,
Which bears a seasoned brain about,
Unsubject to confusion,
Though soaked and saturate, out and out,
Through every convolution.
With many kinsmen gay,
Where long and largely we carouse
As who shall say me nay:
Each month, a birthday coming on,
We drink defying trouble,
Or sometimes two would meet in one,
And then we drank it double;
Had relish fiery-new;
Or, elbow-deep in sawdust, slept,
As old as Waterloo;
Or stowed (when classic Canning died)
In musty bins and chambers,
Had cast upon its crusty side
The gloom of ten Decembers.
She answered to my call,
She changes with that mood or this,
Is all-in-all to all:
She lit the spark within my throat,
To make my blood run quicker,
Used all her fiery will, and smote
Her life into the liquor.
The waiter’s hands, that reach
To each his perfect pint of stout,
His proper chop to each.
He looks not like the common breed
That with the napkin dally;
I think he came, like Ganymede,
From some delightful valley.
Than modern poultry drop,
Stept forward on a firmer leg,
And crammed a plumper crop;
Upon an ampler dunghill trod,
Crowed lustier late and early,
Sipt wine from silver, praising God,
And raked in golden barley.
Till in a court he saw
A something-pottle-bodied boy,
That knuckled at the taw:
He stooped and clutched him, fair and good,
Flew over roof and casement:
His brothers of the weather stood
Stock-still for sheer amazement.
And followed with acclaims,
A sign to many a staring shire,
Came crowing over Thames.
Right down by smoky Paul’s they bore,
Till, where the street grows straiter,
One fixed forever at the door,
And one became head-waiter.
How out of place she makes
The violet of a legend blow
Among the chops and steaks!
’T is but a steward of the can,
One shade more plump than common;
As just and mere a serving-man
As any, born of woman.
Into the common day?
Is it the weight of that half-crown
Which I shall have to pay?
For, something duller than at first,
Nor wholly comfortable,
I sit (my empty glass reversed),
And thrumming on the table:
I take myself to task;
Lest of the fulness of my life
I leave an empty flask:
For I had hope, by something rare,
To prove myself a poet:
But, while I plan and plan, my hair
Is gray before I know it.
Till they be gathered up;
The truth, that flies the flowing can,
Will haunt the vacant cup:
And others’ follies teach us not,
Nor much their wisdom teaches;
And most, of sterling worth, is what
Our own experience preaches.
We know not what we know.
But for my pleasant hour, ’t is gone,
’T is gone, and let it go.
’T is gone: a thousand such have slipt
Away from my embraces,
And fallen into the dusty crypt
Of darkened forms and faces.
Long since, and came no more;
With peals of genial clamor sent
From many a tavern-door,
With twisted quirks and happy hits,
From misty men of letters;
The tavern-hours of mighty wits,—
Thine elders and thy betters.
Had yet their native glow:
Nor yet the fear of little books
Had made him talk for show;
But, all his vast heart sherris-warmed,
He flashed his random speeches;
Ere days, that deal in ana, swarmed
His literary leeches.
Like all good things on earth!
For should I prize thee, couldst thou last,
At half thy real worth?
I hold it good, good things should pass:
With time I will not quarrel:
It is but yonder empty glass
That makes me maudlin-moral.
To which I most resort,
I too must part: I hold thee dear
For this good pint of port.
For this, thou shalt from all things suck
Marrow of mirth and laughter;
And, wheresoe’er thou move, good luck
Shall fling her old shoe after.
The sphere thy fate allots:
Thy latter days increased with pence
Go down among the pots:
Thou battenest by the greasy gleam
In haunts of hungry sinners,
Old boxes, larded with the steam
Of thirty thousand dinners.
Would quarrel with our lot;
Thy care is, under polished tins,
To serve the hot-and-hot;
To come and go, and come again,
Returning like the pewit,
And watched by silent gentlemen,
That trifle with the cruet.
The thick-set hazel dies;
Long, ere the hateful crow shall tread
The corners of thine eyes:
Live long, nor feel in head or chest
Our changeful equinoxes,
Till mellow Death, like some late guest,
Shall call thee from the boxes.
To pace the gritted floor,
And, laying down an unctuous lease
Of life, shalt earn no more;
No carvéd cross-bones, the types of Death,
Shall show thee past to heaven:
But carvéd cross-pipes, and, underneath,
A pint-pot, neatly graven.